


Things That Follow You

by vianne78



Series: Danae [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, Just me trying to get to know my Dovahkiin, Married Couple, More Backstory, Past Sexual Abuse, Romance, dealing with the past, nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 14:47:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10811157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vianne78/pseuds/vianne78
Summary: You can't always escape the monsters of your past. Sometimes you need to decide to stand up to them.Happens some time after Discoveries, but can be read as just a little one-shot.





	Things That Follow You

**Author's Note:**

> This was the second drabble I wrote about my Dovahkiin (and my second fic ever), just creating a bit more backstory. Her story, to me, is an example that despite what you may have gone through, you can survive. You can heal and become whole and you can, most definitely, live happily ever after. She may have a dark past, but she is not a dark character, and I love her dearly.  
> I love Vorstag, too, he's a complete sweetheart.

Sometimes her past came to haunt her.  
She couldn’t remember everything about what had happened to her before she woke up at the creaky carriage, with a splitting headache, on her way to be executed.  
The flashes and feelings she could remember, and the dreams - nightmares - she occasionally had of her previous life, did nothing to encourage her to try very hard.  
She couldn’t remember having parents or siblings.  
She couldn’t remember having a family at all. 

But she did remember she’d had an owner. A keeper.  
A big man, who always had some kind of fur on his shoulders. The fur usually still had eyes, ears and paws. Sometimes even the mouth, frozen open in permanent terror, sharp teeth polished. She had simultaneously felt sorry for the things, and envied them.  
At least they didn’t feel pain or terror anymore.

How she ended up with him, she didn’t know.  
Maybe her parents had sold her. Maybe she had been robbed from them.  
And how many years had she spent there? It didn’t matter.  
She knew she had been her keeper’s dirty little secret. The house had been secluded, and thankfully, he had been gone for long periods of time between visits.  
Those visits she did not care to remember. The dreams of bruising hands in the darkness, and of being suffocated under a great weight were enough.

She did remember someone else.  
An old man, who walked with a limp and took care of the house, and her. She remembered him more vividly than anything else. The old man had had such sadness in his eyes. Such burning hatred, sometimes.  
She could remember feeling protected while with the old man, despite the circumstances. She believed wholeheartedly it was because of that sense of safety, that she had been spared from irreparable emotional damage. After all, usually there had been just the two of them.

They hadn’t been close, exactly. The old man had often gone on for days without uttering a word. Maybe keeping a certain distance had been necessary for him.  
She didn’t know what kind of hold her owner had had on the old man, but it had certainly been tight enough to bind him into submission, into the silent rage she sometimes glimpsed in his eyes. But he’d been a constant presence, and he had taught her things.  
Many things she even back then had suspected he wasn’t supposed to. 

He had taught her to read, and he’d brought her books. A lot of books. She’d been an eager student, delighted in the distraction, and she had read everything she could get her hands on. Most books she’d read more than once, some so many times she’d lost count.  
He had taught her to wield different weapons and defend herself. She had enjoyed that, too. Holding the weapons, she even dared to imagine killing the one who kept visiting her.  
She could often almost hear the satisfying crack of his skull whenever she was rehearsing, like when she was hacking a log to splinters with a heavy war hammer.  
The old man had taught her everything about his old armor he had worn in his days of war. How to put it on, take it off. How to pad it, make it fit.  
How to care for it, how to make it better.  
He had taught her about animals and plants and stars.  
About the wilderness. About surviving. 

The day had come when she had needed everything she had learned.  
Maybe the old man had somehow known what could happen, and had taught her the things he had, just so she could survive.  
Maybe the old man had seen it happen before. She could only guess.

All she remembered for sure was that she had heard unusual noise from the yard - horses - several voices - loud laughing - hollering - and then the old man had hurriedly come to her, terror and fury in his eyes, and told her to leave. To run, right now. As far as she could get and never look back.  
She’d been young and used to taking orders from him, so she did as she’d been told, without questions. He had pushed her out of a back door, locked the door behind her, and that was the last time she had seen him. They had not said goodbye.

She still thought about that, about not even saying goodbye.  
She thought of things she’d like to say, things she’d like to let him know, if she had the chance to do so now. 

She’d run, for days, or maybe even weeks.  
She’d run until her step had become light and efficient, until she had gotten used to the solitude, and the freedom, and the wind on her face.  
Still, to this day, she loved running.  
She had run until the group of soldiers had found her, saying something about finally finding a murderer, and had promptly and brutally knocked her out when she’d tried to escape.

She sometimes heard those voices from the yard in her dreams, and in the dreams she didn’t always get away. Those nights she woke up drenched in sweat and a scream in her throat. Sometimes the scream ripped out of her before she could wake up enough to stop it, and the whole house was awake by the time she finally managed to calm down. 

Looking back, she knew what it was she had been saved from that day.  
And she was sure the old man had died saving her.  
The monster and his noisy friends had killed him for letting her go, and very likely for stalling them as long as he could, so she would have a better chance of getting away.  
She knew that was the murder the soldiers on the border had been talking about the day she’d been caught. The real murderer had pinned the old man’s death on her, so others would take care of the remaining problem. 

She didn’t know how old she was, exactly.  
She didn’t know her birthday.  
She didn’t even know if she’d had a name, given by her parents.  
She only knew that after she had narrowly escaped the execution block, a kind woman named Gerdur had estimated her age to be about 16.  
When they had asked her name, she had randomly given one she remembered from one of her books. Danae. She could remember that in the book, Danae had been the mother of a hero. This time Danae herself would have to be the hero. 

So, then and there, she had been reborn.  
The name had stuck, and little by little, over the years, she had built a life around it.  
Her own life. And people did call her a hero. Every time they did, it felt like a miracle.

She wished she could remember the old man’s name.  
She wasn’t sure she’d ever even heard his name. Or the name of the house.  
Sometimes she wished she could remember the monster’s name, so she, in turn, could pay him a visit. One last visit. She wasn’t a helpless young girl anymore, and could certainly use war hammers efficiently now.  
She wished the old man could somehow know how much he had done for her, wished he could know how many lives his sacrifice had affected. How many lives the girl he had saved had touched by now. She wished..

“Danae?” Her husband’s voice broke through her reverie, and brought her back from the past. She was home, she was safe. Everyone was safe.  
Their two daughters had fallen asleep on the floor with the hounds, in one tangly heap of hands and hair and tails and fur.  
Vorstag had fresh firewood in his arms that he was stacking neatly against the wall.

She blinked away tears and looked up from the crackling fire.

“There you are, my love. I think I lost you for a moment.” Vorstag smiled.  
He knew what she had been thinking, of course.  
He knew everything, so he didn’t ask, didn't have to.  
She knew that given permission, he would hunt down her monster and do unimaginable things to him, before - perhaps - granting him the relief of death.  
He would, if she so much as hinted she wanted him to.  
She knew some men would do so without asking. Vorstag understood better than that. Maybe even better than she did. That endless patience and compassion in his eyes was her undoing.

She looked at him and felt the tears stinging her eyes again, and this time she let them fall.  
A strangled sob escaped her. Vorstag stepped carefully over the sleeping girls and dogs and sat next to her, pulled her gently onto his lap and held her.  
She buried her face in his broad shoulder and cried for a good, long while. 

She cried for the girl who had lost her origins and her innocence.  
For the old man who had been just as much a prisoner as she.  
Cried because she knew she could have ended up used and broken in some nameless grave, and because she knew some other girls surely had. 

She cried because against her odds, she was now a woman who was able and willing to trust, who was surrounded by love and safety and friends.  
She cried, because she had a family of her own, a man she loved fully and fiercely, and who loved her back just as much.  
She cried because she had everything, when she so easily could have ended up with nothing at all.

He let her take her time, kissing her temple softly, murmuring soothing words against her hair. And right there, nestled in his warm embrace, she knew she couldn’t let the monster go.  
She couldn’t let anyone else suffer in his hands if she could help it. 

She had to do something.  
She knew what it was she would have to do.  
It didn’t scare her, after all.  
She felt strangely calm. 

She looked forward to it.

She wiped the tears away with the heel of her palm and raised her head.  
“It has to end. I have to end it”, she said.  
“ _We_ have to end it”, Vorstag said firmly. Not asking, stating a fact. The deep gold of his eyes was very dark.  
She nodded, almost smiled. “We will end it.”


End file.
